Shobu Yarlagadda is the son-in-law of the veteran commercial director K Raghavendra Rao. Despite coming from the family of a commercial director, Shobu Yarlagadda and Prasad Devineni believe in producing clean and different films like Vedam and Maryada Ramanna. Here is our exclusive chitchat with suave and net-savvy producer Shobu -

What does ARKA mean and tell us about your production house?Arka means sunrays in Sanskrit. We started Arka mediaworks in 2001 and started producing content for TV channels. We have around 6-7 of our TV serials aired at any point of time. We produce TV serials in Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Oriya, Bangla and Marathi. Arka is one of the largest TV production houses in South India.

I worked as an executive producer for Bobby and Pandurangadu. I was the line producer for ‘Morning Raaga’.

How did Vedam happen?
We were looking for nice scripts and Krish narrated us the subject. We liked it and Vedam film was supposed to be a small film. It became a big project the moment Allu Arjun, Anushka and Manoj Manchu were roped it. It was a profitable project for us. Vedam generated tremendous critical acclaim.

Tell us how did Maryada Ramanna happen?
I knew SS Rajamouli for the past nine years. I gave him a small amount as advance after the release of Student No.1. During the making of Magadheera, I met him about K Raghavendra Rao’s next movie with Prabhas. He said that he want to do a small film after Magadheera release. He wanted Maryada Ramanna to be produced on his home banner. I reminded him about the advance I gave him and requested him to do that film for Arka media. After a week of deliberation, Rajamouli accepted to direct Maryada Ramanna for us.

Tell us about Maryada Ramanna?
Maryada Ramanna is a comedy film and a clean movie. It’s an entertainer.

What are your future projects?
We will do a film with a big hero in the direction of Krish. We are going to do another big star project. Both these movies will be launched either in the last month of this year or early next year. We are also contemplating on producing Vedam in Hindi. I am going to handle the production of Rajamouli’s next movie with Prabhas as hero.

You are doing innovative promotions for Maryada Ramanna. Tell us about it?
We are using social networking sites to promote Maryada Ramanna aggressively. We have also tried live webcast of Maryada Ramanna music launch. We expected a few hundreds of movie lovers to tune in. We are very happy that 3500 unique visitors watched the webcast of music launch live. We are also holding loads of contests and giving away freebies in Maryada Ramanna film’s official website. Our film website is interactive and we keep in constant touch with the visitors.

Tell us about the release of Maryada Ramanna?
We wanted to release the movie with 250 prints initially and finally decided to release it with 300 prints. But the last minute demand made us to go for 325 prints out of which 60 are digital prints (qube and UFO). The runtime of the movie is 2:08 hours (negative length is 11,800 feet). It was awarded with clean U certificate. We shot the movie in 110 working days. Rajamouli exposed only 1.2 lac ft of spool. Rajamouli is a cost-conscious director. He made sure that every rupee spent on Maryada Ramanna counted. There was never any wastage during production.

Coming from the family of K Raghavendra Rao, you guys are trying for different movies instead of regular commercial flicks?
Producing movies is a pure business proposition for us. In spite of being different movies, Vedam and Maryada Ramanna fetched us table profits. There is already tremendous business craze for Maryada Ramanna because of the brand value of Rajamouli.